They moved in at once. John drew up plans for the garden, and sent to Lambeth for a couple of lads to dig and weed in the orchard, and to a nearby farm for the loan of a horse and a plough to turn over the earth before the house. They planned a garden that would grow fruit and herbs for selling in London, where good quality provender could command high prices. But also they knew that every gardener in the kingdom would long for a chestnut tree, for a double plum, for the Russian larches. It was the launching of a trade which was in its infancy. Every good gardener had spare stock of ordinary plants, the excessive bounty of God saw that where there was one plant there were a hundred seeds in the autumn. Every successful gardener exchanged stock or sold it at a profit to other gardeners. But what they longed for was the rare, the exotic, the strange. When John had worked for a lord it was part of his task to ensure that the gardens were full of rarities and he had guarded his seeds and saplings, and given them away to only his dearest of friends like the herbalist John Gerard or the gardener John Parkinson. Now he could sell them to men who had begged him for a cutting only a few years earlier. Now he could sell them to any gardener who might write to him, and already there were letters from all over England, even from Europe, asking Tradescant for seeds and saplings and yearling plants.

John had plans also for the house. He commissioned a builder to construct a new wing which would nearly double the size of the house.

J took him to one side while the men were unloading a wagon of furniture, and spoke to him urgently while Jane and Elizabeth went to and fro watching the stowing of trunks.

‘I know this is to be our family home, but we don’t need to build it all at once,’ he said. ‘The windows you have planned for the downstairs room will go from ceiling to floor. How will we ever afford the glass? And what if it breaks?’

‘You will be bringing up a young family here,’ John said to J. ‘It’s time you had some room to yourselves. And we need a good-sized room, a handsome room, for the rarities.’

‘But Venetian windows …’ J expostulated.

John laid a finger to his nose. ‘This is to be my rarities room,’ he said. ‘We’ll store them here in a beautiful room and show them to people who come to see them. We’ll charge them sixpence each to enter, and they can stay as long as they like and look around at the things.’

J was uncomprehending. ‘What things?’

‘The two wagons of Buckingham’s rarities,’ John explained precisely. ‘What did you think to do with them?’